Armenia: Peaceful Protest

Halfway down the Danube gives reasons for not attending last Friday’s demonstration held the day after the state of emergency was lifted in Yerevan. The post also looks at the use of the Internet in what some have called an attempt at a “colored revolution” in Armenia. However, the blog disagrees and doesn’t consider that such hopes were realistic anyway.

First, the protest. By all accounts it was pretty impressive. Thousands of people turned out to walk slowly and silently through the center of Yerevan. No shouting, no chants. Lots of black armbands, flowers, and pictures of people killed in the March 1 shootings. Apparently much of the organizing was done on the Internet, especially via Facebook — about which more anon.

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But I can’t tell you what it was like firsthand, because I missed it.

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First, simple caution. The last protest got very ugly, with eight people dead and 100+ injured. I wasn’t expecting this one would go that way, and it didn’t, but still.

[…] Maybe I should be a citizen of the world and stand up for justice wherever I am? I thought about this. The problem with that is, I don’t see Levon Ter-Petrosian as all that much better than the current incumbents.

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I just don’t see the good outcome here. The current government is firmly in control. A lot of people are pissed off, but the larger mass of the population doesn’t seem to care much. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: I just don’t have the feeling that Armenia is ready for a revolution or even a coup. There’s just not a critical mass of popular resentment.

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The government has tried to paint the events of late February and March 1 as a failed attempt at a “Color Revolution”. […] But it’s nonsense. Ter-Petrosian isn’t “pro-Western” nor particularly liberal. He’s just a rival for power. And “people are pissed off at a stolen election” does not make a revolution, or even an attempt at one.

But while recent events weren’t Colorful, they had some… Color-ish aspects. Which points towards something I’ve mentioned before: the techniques of the Color Revolutions are content-neutral. Anyone can use the Internet to organize. There may have been a brief period when this sort of thing was the exclusive province of hip savvy pro-Western young people, but that period is about to end if it hasn’t already.